Chicago City Wire

Cindy and I enjoy watching "It's a Wonderful Life" each year, not because the hero's name is "Bailey," although we enjoy that.



It's a movie that shows people's inherent power of goodness and how ordinary people can make a difference by getting up every day, making sacrifices for their families, and helping others.


It also shows how people with good intent and hard work but very little wealth can still mobilize support to keep a community healthy and happy — and to hold people that are not good at bay, even though they may be rich and powerful.


As an angel says, it shows, "Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"


And the movie shows what life would be like in a once peaceful and thriving community if the good were not around to hold the greedy and powerful at bay. In the movie, the version of the town without a few good people was called "Potterville" after the wealthy and powerful man who changed the town in the absence of one good man.


This beautiful movie comes to mind often as I speak to my new neighbors in Chicago. So many good people in this city are sad to see what's happening here. People are always talking about leaving. And when each good person leaves Chicagoland, it tears a little hole in the fabric of our community.


"Pritzkerville" is the version of Chicago we see today. It's a place where politicians have gone soft on crime and hard on the police, where leading businesses like Caterpillar and Boeing leave and are replaced by a massive new casino and dispensaries.


"Pritzkerville" is a version of Chicago where hard-working people find life more challenging, where taxes are too high and keep going higher. Where food and gas costs are high and even higher than in neighboring states because merchants are subject to harassing rules, taxes, and increasing theft.


"Pritzkerville" is a version of Chicago where the Mayor bullies and berates, and swears more than any trucker I have ever known, and it's where the current Governor, JB Pritzker, has made his home.


It's the kind of place where a billionaire can rip toilets out of his mansion to dodge paying the high taxes he and his friends impose on others and still escape prosecution when his cheating becomes public.


Pritzker has his security, but he smirks about your lack of safety — he has his, so you're on your own sucker. His ethic of high taxes, dishonesty, and disregard for making government work for you instead of sticking it to you is the ethic that is tearing Chicago down.


I'm a farmer. Like many of you, I know what it's like to work with my hands and push through exhaustion to provide for my family and employees. Governor Pritzker doesn't. It should come as no surprise that he turns a blind eye to rampant crime in our minority communities and good jobs leaving our state for better climates - these aren't problems that affect him.


Chicago is a physically beautiful city, and there are still so many good people here. But if you want to make Chicago the shining city on Lake Michigan again, we need to change the governing ethic here. And to do that, you need to vote for different people — for people that seek to work for you, not to boss you around; for people that want to empower parents and who share your ethos.


If you don't like what Chicago has become and want out of Pritzkerville, you don't have to pack up and leave. Instead, you can start the renewal of Chicago by voting for me instead of J.B. Pritzker. It's easier to move your finger when you vote than to pack up a van to move your family.


Ask yourself, after four years of J.B. - do you feel your family is any safer? Do you feel it's easier to find a good job and make an honest living? Do you feel that our state or city government is any less corrupt?


Friends, we all know what the answers are. I love Illinois, and I'm running to serve and restore it for everyone. Choose wisely, Chicagoans.